


quiet company

by StarlightDragon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Artist Gabriel, Bats, Chance Meetings, First Kiss, First Meetings, Fluff, Love Confessions, Love at First Sight, M/M, Science, Scientist Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 12:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6854752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightDragon/pseuds/StarlightDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Gabriel can't sleep, he goes for walks in the woods. He's never come across anyone else while he walks before, but a wrong turning changes everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	quiet company

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kibbers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kibbers/gifts).



> Hi Kibbers. <3 So I don't know if you remember a while back when some strange invasive person was sending you asks about when your birthday was and what you liked in fics? Well... that was totally me, and this was totally the result. So I hope I did an okay job, and I hope your birthday was just as wonderful as you are.

It began, as everything always does, with a mistake.

Gabriel couldn't sleep. This happened a lot, especially since the move. Living in the outskirts of Sioux Falls, he was still technically in a city, but it didn't compare to New York, not in the slightest. Here, things were far too quiet. It unsettled him, because when traffic and music were blaring outside his apartment window at four in the morning, at least he knew that everything was okay, that the city was still living and functioning around him. Here, he could close his eyes and open his ears and still hear nothing. Everyone else could have vanished, and he wouldn't know a thing about it.

It was hard to sleep when you were worried that the rest of your city had disappeared.

Gabriel climbed out of bed and shook out his limbs, restless from tossing and turning for hours now. He threw on his oldest, softest jeans, and didn't bother changing out of his nightshirt, because he wasn't going anywhere where anyone would be able to see him, after all - and then he padded out of his house.

When he couldn't sleep, he liked to go for walks in the forest. The forest had just enough animals, just enough life, to keep him feeling safe and like he wasn't completely alone in the world, but he was unlikely to see any actual people - nobody who would want to talk to or hurt a small guy like him in the middle of the night.

And now that he'd been living here for a few months, he'd developed a routine. He took the left fork in the first path, climbed over the fallen tree trunk a little further down, made a right at the big clearing, then followed the curve of the path round to--

Wait, no.

No, that wasn't right. He had most definitely not been on this path before. He was supposed to get to the little stream with the tiny wooden bridge, but instead the path he was on was narrowing, becoming thinner and thinner until Gabriel was picking his way through the trees. Prickly branches were scratching his skin, the thin material of his nightshirt hardly enough to protect him from the sharp needles that drew tiny trickles of blood from his arms. 

Gabriel had definitely gone wrong somewhere, and he was not supposed to be here, and for the first time in a long time he was a little worried about how he was going to get back. 

He thought about turning back right away, but he didn't want to do that if he could help it. His heart was pounding, and he was scared, but also a little bit excited. The walk through the forest was relaxing when he knew where he was going, but here, a little bit lost and unsure of where he was... the very air itself tasted of possibility, and Gabriel gulped it in, grinning to himself in the silence, and even though he knew it wasn't the most sensible idea, he wanted to carry on, to journey further, and never mind what was going to happen because of it.

He supposed he'd always been impulsive, always ignored the risks of what could be waiting for him, and this was just as true tonight as it usually was. It had been a while since he'd done anything like this, and it made him want to leap through the trees with excitement, swinging on the branches and feeling the air whip through his hair.

He didn't do those things, but he did press on, fighting his way through smaller and smaller spaces between trees. He pretended he was an intrepid explorer, searching through new and uncharted territory that nobody else had ever discovered, hardened from years of journeying through the forests.

And then...

Gabriel's foot caught on a low hanging branch. He stumbled, grabbed onto a tree for support, and there was a loud rustling sound as thousands and thousands of summer leaves were disturbed by his sudden, unexpected movement, and Gabriel tried to steady himself as well as all the wildlife, but it was too late. Gabriel's tripping had set off a chain reaction; animals were being disturbed, leaves were falling to the ground, there were squeaks and hoots coming from all around him - as well as the sound of something larger, much larger, pushing through the trees towards him.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Gabriel was going to get mauled to death by a bison or whatever it was that lived in this forest, and it was going to be all his stupid, sleepy self's fault for taking a wrong turning.

Gabriel braced himself, raising his fists to defend himself, even though he knew that his own two tiny fists were no match for a literal bison.

A figure burst through two trees ahead of him and jolted to a halt when it saw Gabriel. Too tall and too two-legged to be a bison, or anything else that Gabriel's mind had concocted. In fact, it looked human.

"Hello?" he asked, feeling a little stupid.

There was a sigh of relief. "Damn, you had me scared for a minute."

"What?" Gabriel breathed in surprise.

"Wasn't sure where the noise came from. I don't think there's anything really bad in here, but you can never be too careful, you know?" The man strolled closer, and the moonlight filtering through the trees illuminated him. He was tall, far taller than Gabriel, with long hair tied back into a messy bun, a camera slung around his neck, a clipboard dangling from his hand.

"Yeah. Yeah, I was scared too," Gabriel replied unnecessarily, due to the fact that he was still breathing heavily.

"Right, yeah. Hey, man, put your fists down, would you?" the guy chuckled.

Gabriel glanced down at his own hands, which were still ready to spring into an attack. He lowered them to his sides, feeling even more stupid now. "I'm sorry. I promise I wasn't actually going to punch you or anything."

"Yeah, I know. Just making sure. It's a little unsettling talking to a guy who looks like he's getting ready to attack."

"I mean, it's not like I could punch you even if I wanted to. You're a lot bigger than me and I've never had any training and so I wouldn't know where the good places to aim were and plus, my arm hurts, so I'd probably end up just like, tapping your arm and making you laugh with how pathetic I was, so it's not like anything would have happened either way, but, all the same, my arms are now down, and... sorry, I'm rambling."

The man chuckled. "Trust me, this is more conversation than I've had in months. It's a refreshing change."

"Yeah, why are you here in the middle of the night?" Gabriel asked, endlessly curious.

The man debated for a moment, and then he beckoned to Gabriel. "Come with me."

He held out his hand, and Gabriel took it. The hand was much bigger than his own, soft and warm despite the calluses that Gabriel could feel, and even though it was only their hands that were wrapped up in one another, it made Gabriel feel safe and protected as he was led further and further into the forest.

The moon followed their movements, and both of them were silent as they walked, until finally they reached a clearing with a large, hollow log in the center of it. Things were spread out all around the log - a tripod, a rucksack, a foldaway table with a travel mug of coffee balanced on top of it, various pens with chewed lids, a thick Stanford sweatshirt, two scientific books with boring-looking covers, and a laptop. Gabriel had never seen a part of the forest look so human. He usually didn't even stumble upon any dropped candy wrappers.

The man gestured around the clearing. "This is, uh, I suppose you'd call it my office. It's where I work, anyway. I'm a researcher, I'm studying the Eastern Red Bats, how their habits change from month to month, and I help out on the conservation efforts... probably nothing you'd find interesting. But there's a lot of them around here, so I'm out here pretty much every night." He pointed to the log. "I'm like a squirrel, I hide snacks and things inside there. I take all my expensive equipment home just in case, but nobody ever comes by, so I don't actually worry about stuff being taken. So, uh, feel free to grab some candy or something."

Gabriel laughed and crouched down, gazing into the inside of the log. The guy hadn't been lying. It looked like he was preparing for hibernation with the amount of stuff he had hidden away in here. 

He grabbed a Milky Way and opened it up, biting off about a third at once. He hadn't realized how hungry he was, although he supposed it made sense, considering he hadn't eaten since dinnertime, and the sun was just now starting to rise. Around a mouthful of sticky candy, he said, "I think this is awesome. Way more interesting than my work, anyway. 'M Gabriel, by the way."

"I'm Sam. And, yes, the work is fascinating... it does get lonely sometimes, though. No Wi-Fi or cell service out here, and I can't even play music, because I have to keep an ear out for anything strange happening."

Gabriel nodded in understanding. "So it's just you? On your own, every single night?" He couldn't imagine that. Gabriel lived for workplace gossip and being surrounded by people during the day, and as much as he wished that he could tell people he was a bat researcher rather than a marketing guy for Forever 21, he thought he would probably go insane if he had to spend that much time on his own.

"Just me. Well, a friend of mine, Castiel, he lectures on these things over at the university, and he comes by occasionally. But most of the time it's me. And usually I prefer the quiet, but just occasionally, I wish I had some company."

Gabriel swallowed the last mouthful of the candy bar and shoved the wrapper into his pocket before plopping himself down on the log. "All right then."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "Alright what?"

"Alright, here's your company. I'm here, I'm watching you work, you can talk to me, explain what's going on. Whatever you want."

Sam stared at him with a blank expression, blinking slowly.

"Well, come on! I know I'm pretty but it's the bats you're meant to be researching, not me," Gabriel laughed, spreading his arms wide and turning his face to the sky so that the moonlight caught on his cheeks.

"I wonder how Castiel would react if I showed up with a scientific description of the man I met in the forest in the middle of the night," Sam chuckled, walking to the edge of the clearing, inspecting a thicket of trees, peering between the leaves.

He frowned, his forehead wrinkling in deep concentration, and Gabriel kept quiet so that he didn't disturb him too much. Finally, Sam turned back around.

"They usually begin heading back to sleep at this time, finding their nesting places when it starts to get light. But because you disturbed the trees, some of them might have been scared away. They'll certainly be warier. Less likely to settle down so quickly. So I'll be interested to see how that affects them."

"I'm sorry." Gabriel cast his eyes to the forest floor in apology.

"Don't be sorry. Like I say, it'll be an experiment. I'll get to find out how they react to a surprise in their routine."

Gabriel nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense. I just feel bad. They're bats, they're adorable, I hope I didn't scare them too much."

Sam chuckled. "You won't have done. This is their corner of the forest, it won't take them long to figure out that there's no long term threat."

Sam flitted from one side of the clearing to the other, occasionally disappearing from sight for a couple of minutes as he crawled beneath bushes or ducked round behind trees. Gabriel heard the frequent click of the camera shutter, or scratch of a pen on the clipboard, but otherwise the place was quiet. The sun rose slowly in the sky, warming Gabriel's back, and he began to grow sleepier, and he thought that he could probably fall asleep here if he laid down on the floor.

He didn't do that, though. The promise of Sam's excited voice explaining a new discovery every time something interesting happened with the bats was enough to keep him awake and alert, eyes tracking Sam's movements. It occurred to Gabriel that Sam didn't have a lot of people who were willing to listen to him talk about this, and Sam's voice was just bursting with passion on the subject, his eyes lighting up, sounding like he was struggling to keep all his emotions inside. Gabriel half expected him to start bouncing any second.

Gabriel wasn't sure how much longer they stayed there, but he knew that by the time Sam returned and sat down next to him, it was fully light and he was starting to feel the prickle of a slight sunburn on the back of his neck.

Sam sat down very close by, closer than Gabriel had expected, considering it was a long log with plenty of room for both of them. He wasn't complaining, though, and in fact he was just sleepy enough to lean even further into Sam, resting their shoulders against one another.

Sam smiled. "So, I think it's time I should be packing up. Go home, get some sleep, come back tonight when it starts to get dark."

"Nothing happens during the day?" Gabriel asked.

"Not usually. The bats sleep, so I do too. In a bed in a house, though - I know this is all you've seen of me so far, but I don't have a treehouse in the next clearing or anything. I do actually have a pretty normal life, friends, family..."

Gabriel giggled at Sam trying to defend his normalcy, although he couldn't help but be a little disappointed by Sam mentioning his family. He supposed it made sense. Sam was probably married. Two daughters who wore their hair in braids and never got into fights with the other kids in their nursery school. It made Gabriel oddly sad to think of, and he found himself wishing that the treehouse thing was true. "Hey, I'd think it was pretty cool if you did sleep up in a treehouse. No judgment here, not from the guy who takes midnight forest walks in his pajamas."

"Yeah, I never did ask you why you were doing that," Sam mused.

"It's not even a good story. Let me make up a better one. Um, okay, so what happened is that I was asleep, and then, uh, my phone rang. And on the other end of the line it was my past self from ten years ago, and he said, Gabriel, it is incredibly important that you go outside right now, there's someone waiting for you. So I went outside and he was right, I men, I was right, there was a car idling on the kerb. But as soon as it saw me it drove off. I chased it to the nearest stoplight, only when I got there, it vanished - completely vanished into a puff of thin air, only then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a medium sized dragon--"

Sam held up a hand to stop him, his eyes glinting like candles in an otherwise darkened room.

"You don't have to pretend to be interesting, Gabriel."

Gabriel chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "I feel like I do, you know? You've literally spent hours telling me all these fascinating facts about bats, you know so much, you have this awesome life that I could never have imagined, this passion that you've really done something amazing with... and I know I don't have any of that, and usually that's okay, but when I'm around you I have to pretend that I do."

Sam shook his head, leaning in even closer. "No, I mean you don't have to pretend to be interesting, because you already are interesting. Just on your own. Without having to come up with any stories, as entertaining as they may be. And you sat here for hours listening to me talk about the sleeping patterns of bats, of all things... and I want to do the same thing for you. I want to learn all about what you're interested in."

Gabriel didn't know what to say to that. The two of them locked eye contact, gazing at each other. Sam's lips parted, and Gabriel's tongue darted out on instinct to lick his own, and he felt the same kind of restless energy that he had when he'd first realized that he'd made a wrong turning, as though he could do anything right now, and he didn't care about the consequences.

But this time, he forced himself to stop.

Gabriel coughed, turning away. "Sorry. Don't know what happened there. You should get home to your family."

Sam laughed, though it sounded forced, his eyes devoid of a smile for the first time since Gabriel had first seen him. "Bobby will already be out at work. That's my uncle who I'm staying with for now, he's a mechanic. Rest of my family is down in Kansas, my brother, my dad, everyone. I don't actually have to get back." But he started packing his things away into his rucksack anyway.

So, no wife and no two perfect daughters at nursery school. That made Gabriel smile. "Uh, Sam?"

Sam whipped around much faster than Gabriel expected, meeting his eyes. "Yes?"

Gabriel swallowed, nervous, wishing he had some time to collect himself before he had to ask this question. "Would it be okay with you if... if... if I came back sometime?"

Sam didn't move.

"I get it if this was just, like, a one off and you'd rather work alone in general. But I had a really good time, I mean it, and it was way better than spending all night not being able to sleep and flipping my pillow every ten minutes to get to the cold side. So yeah, tell me if you don't want me, but if you meant what you said about wishing you had company sometimes... I'd like to be that company."

Sam chuckled. "Oh yeah, and what, you're just gonna sit there while I do my work, waiting patiently for me when I don't speak for hours on end? That's a lovely idea, sounds like something from out of a movie, but I can't imagine you'd actually want-"

"I'll bring my sketchbook," Gabriel blurted, and he hadn't considered the idea before, but as soon as he said it, he realized how much perfect sense it made. "I can draw. It's what I do in my free time, usually. And it's quiet and I can just sit here and focus on that and we can both talk about what we're doing when we want a break. And I'm not saying every night. Cause I sleep, occasionally, despite what it might seem like. But maybe just a couple of nights a week?"

Sam nodded slowly, still looking uncertain. "So, what? You gonna draw bats? Trees? Your four Milky Way wrappers, because don't think I didn't notice you sneak the rest of those?"

Gabriel blushed, shoving the wrappers deeper into his pocket. "No, I'm going to draw you. Because you might not be allowed to write a scientific description of the man you met in the forest in the middle of the night, but I will be on my free time, and consequently allowed to draw whatever I want. And I want to draw the hot scientist who works here."

Sam took a deep breath, and went to sit back down beside Gabriel. "Honestly? That sounds too good to be true."

"Maybe it is," Gabriel shrugged. "But... we don't know until we try, yeah?"

"I don't know. Maybe we should just have this one night to look back on, because don't get me wrong, I have loved having you here. I have. And if you don't come back, then I'll wish you had, but it means we can't ruin it, right? It means we can't turn into these two people who spend all this time together wishing the other one wasn't around and... it'll always be a good memory we can look back on. And I don't have a lot of good memories that haven't been ruined somehow. Maybe I want this to be one of the few."

Gabriel sighed. He wasn't used to having to be the voice of reason. He took one of Sam's hands in both of his and looked into Sam's eyes as he said, "Yeah. You're right. Maybe that would be safer. And, God, this seems like an unnecessarily serious conversation to have with someone I only just met, especially while I'm this tired. But you know what? I've been walking that same path through the forest for months now and nothing interesting has ever happened to me. I walked, and then I went home, night after night. Tonight I changed it up. I didn't mean to, but it happened, and because of it... I met the best and the most interesting person I have in a really fucking long time, Sam. Me taking that chance was worth it. You look me in the eye and tell me no again and I'll leave and I'll make sure any path I walk in this forest keeps me well away from here, but... I think you should take a chance too. I think I would do everything I can to make sure you don't regret it either."

Sam did not say no. Sam widened his eyes still further, gazing into Gabriel's own as though desperately searching for more guidance.

"Let me put that another way." Gabriel's voice trembled, and he thought that now, he knew what the branches on the trees had felt like when he'd tripped and disturbed them. Like his entire life was being shaken apart. But if Sam wanted guidance, then Gabriel would give it to him, because he had one more suggestion, one more thing he thought he might be able to use to convince him.

He squeezed Sam's hand a little tighter, his own two smaller hands folding around it like the wings of the Eastern red bat as it slept, just like in the picture Sam had shown him, and he leaned in closer, his eyes falling shut. And he used instinct to find Sam's lips with his own, the two of them melting into one another, the warmth of the sunlight nothing on the warmth that spread through both of them when their lips first brushed.

Gabriel tugged on Sam's lower lip with his teeth, ever so gently, because Sam was fragile and precious and if Gabriel kissed him too hard then he was sure to break him, and that couldn't be allowed to happen. So Gabriel was careful, tracing the curve of Sam's lips with his tongue, and when Sam let out the softest whisper into his mouth, it felt like the most hard earned victory, and Gabriel couldn't help smiling into the kiss, Sam's soft, delicate lips smiling with him.

Gabriel pulled back. Sam still had his eyes shut and his mouth slightly open, looking completely at peace.

"That's, uh, that's all I got," Gabriel whispered, deciding the stillness meant he wasn't allowed to talk at a normal volume. "So... your call. You want me to come back?"

When Sam opened his eyes, they were filled with an unexpected amount of pain as he whispered back, desperately, "More than anything else in the whole world."

Gabriel understood. He knew that Sam didn't know what to do with quite how badly he wanted it, so he didn't try to make him explain - just took Sam in his arms, Sam folding against him and resting his chin on Gabriel's shoulder.

The bats were asleep. Both Sam and Gabriel rightfully should have been, too. But instead they were here, sitting on a log in the middle of the forest in the morning sun, birds chirping around them, trees rustling in the slight breeze, wrapped up in each other's arms like this was a perfectly normal situation to find themselves in.

And perhaps, before long, it would be. 

**Author's Note:**

> The original title for this was: You'd Have To Be Batty Not To Fall In Love With Me. You're welcome.
> 
> come say hi at **casandsip.tumblr.com**


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